The Over-Educated Nympho

I left yesterday afternoon to go out of town to visit my parents.

I always have mixed feelings about seeing my parents. Dad is great. Cool, fun, easy-going, smiley. Mom is… The MOM. A force not to be reckoned with because she ALWAYS WINS.

My stomach was in knots the whole drive. Over the years I have called The MOM less, returned less of her calls, made the journey to visit them less, because what’s the point of spending an afternoon driving across the state to get yelled at?

Especially when it’s so much easier to get yelled at over the phone… preferably over voicemail. Because I set my cell phone to have a special ring when The Mom calls so I know not to answer because… drumroll.. I will get yelled at. Or worse, sighed at.

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This morning I got pulled over for running a red light. Oh please, if I deserve a ticket for anything (and I most certainly do because I drive like a bat out of hell) it’s for speeding. Or for using my “driving finger” too much.

When the cop was looking at my driver’s license he said “Twenty six, eh? That’s my daughter’s age. It looks like you’re on your way to work� what is your degree in?”

I told him and then he got very serious. “Now don’t take this the wrong way—”

Oh fuck. What what WHAT???

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I’ve done this. Many of us when we were adorable twelve-year olds have done this, passed along such a note to a beloved crush during math class:

Do you like me? Check one:
____yes!!!
____no

I wish it were still acceptable to do this in adulthood, because it would make things so much easier.

Actually, no, theoretically it would make things easier but in reality you would have to question and analyze to figure out if the note-receiver were lying or telling the truth. Did he say yes just to get in my pants, or did he say yes because he means yes, or did he say no just to make me try harder, or did he say no and mean no, the bastard?

And that’s why we need more boxes.

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Well happy freaking blogiversay to me. One year ago today I started up my blog at the long-winded advice and persistence of my friends, and I’m glad I did.

However, warning: all pleasantries in this post are strictly sarcastic/tongue-in-cheek. I’ve been really pissy and depressed and absent from the blogosphere lately, and for good reasons that I can only allude to.

I’ve been through a lot over the last year: panicking about getting a job after college (earning three degrees doesn’t guarantee you SHIT), getting my first job after moping around the apartment for a couple months, hating it and quitting and getting a much better job where I currently am now. Although all I think about lately is how I want to be a writer instead. But let’s save that pity-party for another post.

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I miss having the confidence I did when I was single. I’m not talking about the daily validation from appreciative male eyes, but the fact that I had to count on myself. I didn’t have a choice, reallly, about being fully self-reliant. Without a boyfriend or a best girl friend, I was just SOL. I had to be strong, even on the days where I crumbled into a huge mess. Somehow, I managed to pick up the pieces of my broken self.

But now, having a boyfriend, I’ve come to rely on him too much. I take for granted the fact that I can hold myself together just long enough to get home from work and see him opening the door for me and I just let all the pieces fly out of my hands in all directions. “Would you pick that up, sweetie? I can’t seem to do it myself.” As if all I’m talking is something as simple as picking up his goddamn dirty socks on the floor.

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Today was my six-month anniversary of working at this office, my first real, non-internship, 401(k)-holding, post-grad school job.

So I called in sick to work and felt sorry for myself all day by refusing to get out of bed except to watch tv and eat oreos.

I don’t exactly hate my job, but I don’t love it either. I don’t jump out of bed, eager to go to work and prove myself as a valuable member of society. It takes me three snoozes, two dogs walking over my face, and my boyfriend threatening me before I get out of bed to go to work.

Is it possible to be having my mid-life crisis, like, twenty years early? Wouldn’t that make it my quarter-life crisis?

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That’s right, I randomly accidentally didn’t-try-very-hard got a job. A real 401(k)-toting grown-up job. Oh dear.

I’ve had office jobs before, but they were all during school. I was always an intern. I always asked for my own business card, I never got one because I wasn’t important enough, so I printed my own on Office Depot business card **smooth edges** paper that–of course–always had a faint sign of perforated edges that all but sang JUST AN INTERN JUST AN INTERN. No more of that. I won’t even have to beg. My desk won’t be in the Marketing section. They won’t ask me to work the phones during lunch while the receptionist is gone, and I won’t have to assert my forthright independence by putting Sweet N Low in my boss’s coffee instead of Nutrasweet!!

But this folks, is a REAL job. Not only will I not be an intern, but I’ll be expected to work my ass off so I can get a promotion as soon as I learn not to cuss when I talk on the phone. That means I get R-E-S-P-O-N-S-I-B-I-L-I-T-Y. And RESPECT. Sing it with me, sisters!

Fuckfuckfuckfuck. I’m not sure I can handle this. I still can’t even remember to feed myself regularly.

——-

(that was me, passing out)

Although of course now that I’ve publicly stated all my big grand ideals about how I won’t be Coffee Bitch, I’m sure as soon as I start on Monday they’ll put me on the dusty 486 computer that only runs DOS and I’ll spend all day punching out my new INTERN business cards from their perforated edges.

Mom just called.

She has her own special ring on my cell phone. For her cell phone, work phone, and home phone, they all have the shrill YOUR MOTHER’S CALLING ring. Whenever I hear it, even on someone else’s phone, I automatically recoil in preparation of The MOM. In all her emails, she types normally until the end and she always capitalizes MOM. Like she’s a deity or a monster or arch-enemy with her own movie coming out soon. Which, she is. All of the above. No one intimidates me more than The MOM. None of the razor-blade-spitting bosses I’ve had have ever put the fear of death into me like The MOM.

I think she figured out the separate phone ring though (over the course of two years) and now calls me on Dad’s cell phone because then I actually think it’s Dad and pick up, only to hear “Have you read my email?? I emailed you yesterday! When are you going to therapy again? Did you tell him you need to go every week? Did you tell him your pills aren’t working?”

–sigh–

And she had the nerve to ask BF last weekend why I never pick up the phone? As if there were any question, really.

After two unanswered emails and three unanswered calls (and a bitchy blog entry), I decide it’s time to pick up the phone so she doesn’t call BF at work and demand to know IS MY DAUGHTER DEAD OR JUST FAKING IT AGAIN? (yes, she’s actually done this. Despite what the all-capital-letters suggest, my mother does not scream or shout or even raise her voice. No. She’s The MOM. She doesn’t need to raise her voice. Her tone alone can make people drop to the ground as fast as cow shit. I just use all capital letters to suggest an element of fear)

“Are you going to see Dr Xanax tomorrow?”
yes mom.

“Are you going to ask to try new medication?”
yes mom.

“Are you going to ask if you can have weekly therapy sessions?”
yes mom.

“Are you going to haggle to see if he’ll charge less for you?”
yes mom.

“Are you going to tell him about how you’re unproductive and can’t send out your resume?”
yes mom.

“Are you going to tell him about all the time you’re spending in bed?”
yes mom.

“Are you going to tell him that you MUST get his taken care of? Every day you lose to depression is a day of your life you’ve lost.”
yes mom.

“Have you set up a separate therapy session?”
yes mom.

“I read in the newspaper that some people just have bad genes. They get depression for life and never get over it, no matter what pills they try. Do you want me to send you the article?”
No, I want you to withhold any information that may make me start to cry. Like now. I’m about to cry.

“Oh honey, don’t cry. You’re just making yourself depressed all over again!”
No, you did.

“Don’t you even think about going to that fridge and getting out the ice cream. I know how you are with that ice cream. I noticed you’ve gained weight.”
yes mom.

“Your aunt told me about this new surgery technique they’re trying called transcranial something-or-other that is a procedure that fixes your brain so it releases the right hormones when it’s supposed to so you don’t get depressed. You should look it up. In a couple years maybe you can get it done.”
You want me to get my brain probed?

“Not probe, sweetie, FIX. Look it up on the internet.”
yes mom.

“So I think you may have that bad gene I was just talking about where you’re depressed for life and nothing can fix it, you’re just like, screwed for life. I think that’s you, because you’re not doing as well as me or your brother or any of our other relatives on anti-depressants.”
Thanks Mom, that’s YOUR gene that’s screwed me up.

“It could have come from your father, you know, I swear they’re all depressed.”
They’re just alcoholics, Mom. HAPPY alcoholics.

“Don’t you think that’s CAUSED by depression?”
No, I think mothers that send them depressing articles all the time are what cause depression. Then they drink so they lose brain cells and can’t remember what they read in all these damn articles.

“Stop being negative, that’s not going to get you anywhere.”
yes mom.

“You know, you should be so thankful you’ve got all these people around to help you with your depression.”
yes mom.

“Especially BF, he has to see you ALL THE TIME and that’s not easy, especially for someone who’s never been through depression himself.”
yes mom.

“You be careful, you can’t let your depression get any worse or you’ll scare him off.”
yes mom.

“That’s why I’m nagging you to take care of this NOW, before you get worse.”
yes mom.

“Well, I’m glad we’ve talked. Call me tomorrow and let me know what new medication he suggested you try.”
yes mom.

“And since you’re feeling better today, why don’t you send out a couple resumes? You’ll feel better once you get a job.”
yes mom.

“Bye sweetie!”
CLICK.

__________

I need to ask the psychiatrist for stronger Xanax tomorrow. This pissy little .5mg shit ain’t holding up to The MOM. I need a force stronger than The MOM. Like Xanax in the water filter and cheap vodka.

In some psychology class I took I read about a test a bunch of psychologists gave to a group of children. I could google this, but I don’t care enough. They told the little kids, you can have ONE piece of chocolate right now, OR you can wait fifteen minutes and get TWO pieces of chocolate. Something like half the kids chose each. The kids who waited fifteen minutes occupied themselves by playing with toys provided, running around, or even just sitting in a corner and counting to fifteen over and over again. The test was something about twenty years later how these kids responded to the question was an accurate prediction of their patience/maturity/responsibility once they grew up.

I feel confident saying that if I had been in this test as a child, I would have quietly informed the nice man that I would wait the fifteen minutes, and then I would have sat by myself with a book and happily received two pieces of candy at the end.

Now I’m pretty certain that if the OEN of now could occupy that child twenty years ago, I would have kicked the psychologist in the shins, stolen the candy from his hand, knocked the other children down, shouted in the psychologist’s face YOU CAN’T MAKE ME, YOU BIG POOPHEAD! WHATCHA GONNA DO ABOUT YOUR CHOCOLATE NOW, MR. CANDYMAN??? and promptly run off, shoving chocolates into my mouth as fast as possible.

In less than two weeks I will be in [BF’s Motherland] for two weeks. That’s where BF’s family currently lives. Since we’ve been dating for over a year, live together, will probably enter the marriage cult, it’s time I flew across the ocean to meet his family. Or rather, it’s time they met ME.

I’m not at all worried about meeting his family. I’m a fucking charmer. Everyone loves me, especially parents. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve worked the parents. At the age of ten, my best friend’s mother thought I was an excellent influence on her daughter. And yes I was–we ran around naked and put things in our shirts pretending they were boobs and then one of us would but a bottle in our underwear to look like a penis and we’d start rubbing against each other on the bed. I was an excellent influence.

BF’s parents sound completely normal. They have their issues, but frankly anyone who doesn’t have some sort of abuse/addiction problem seems a bit odd to me. Our destructive behaviours are what make us interesting. People read my blog because of my sex-machine nature, depression, fucked-up sense of humor, and inappropriate sexual escapades. I’m not going to pretend that you love me for my personality.

The parents I am not concerned with. I am, however, worried about internet access and keeping up my blog. From what I’ve heard, they only have DIAL UP INTERNET. –keels over and starts sucking thumb while in fetal position– How can I be expected to work with these conditions?

Sure, there are internet cafes, but BF says the ones there are lame and besides we’re staying with his family who live an hour outside the city. Aaccckkkkk. I might as well just tack hand-written notes to messenger birds and hope they don’t eat the paper out of starvation while flying across a fucking ocean and then end up pooping out my precious toiled-over thoughts and witticisms, only to be eaten by one-eyed fish. What a miserable end to such a good blog beginning.

BF’s sister is the person I am most anxious and worried about meeting. I suspect she is the one whose approval I must seek, since the sister is the only family member he ever talks about unprompted. She’s my age, has my same sense of humor (half the photos I’ve seeen of her she is grotesquely sticking out her tongue, which is same immature behavior I regularly exhibit in front of a camera), similar artistic sensibility, and has loads of dirt on what BF was like as an older brother.

The sister is the one I must befriend. In fact, we sound so alike that it’s quite possible I will ditch BF and start dating his sister. I’ve always wondered it would be like to date myself. From what I’ve been told I’m a bit of a drama queen, which I doubt. Or can even you blog readers tell I’m a drama queen and you’re currently on the floor laughing and pissing yourself because you think my state of denial is so fucking funny?

Now there’s the marriage issue. It came up a dozens times during the wedding this weekend (which I still haven’t written about, so yes I admit to my total suckage), every time I saw a relative above the age of eighteen. Being from a huge Catholic family, that meant I didn’t stumble from the table to the margarita machine without getting intercepted twice to be asked “Are you and BF going to be the next wedding we attend?” I know what they really mean is “we know you’re living together in sin and copulating in sin and doing all sorts of sinful things while committing those sins, so you should at least have the courtesy of having your relationship approved in the eyes of God eventually, and the rest of our judgmental family who are far more likely to be the ones who strike me dead. Bloody hell.

Although I expect BF’s family to be more tactful and at least have the courtesy of boozing me up before the interview of “when will you be our daughter-in-law and how much time do I have to sew a baby quilt and knit booties?” Don’t mind me, I’ll be the one hiding under the bed suckling on a blanket. I AM NOT READY FOR MARRIAGE. I AM IMMATURE AND IRRESPONSIBLE, I THOUGHT THIS WAS CLEAR.

Every time a relative at the wedding asked me about my non-existent wedding, I said something like “oh I’m not ready yet” or “give me a couple years, I want to get my career settled first” or “go pick on cousin Brian, he’s older and still single, he might even be homosexual, you’d better go talk to him about the Bible.”

BF later told me he was also repeatedly grilled, and he gave the standard answer “I’m waiting till she gets a job so I can save up money to buy a ring.” Then during the garter toss (was it a conspiracy??) the groom threw the blue lacy garter directly to my boyfriend. Aw bloody hell.

The bouquet toss was next, which I tried to hide from behind a big piece of chocolate cake, but three aunts pushed me into the middle of the group of otherwise giggly gaggle of girls. The bride, being my cousin and longest friend, threw it at me but goddamnit, my silly hands stayed right at my side, making it easy for another bridesmaid to catch it instead. As I walked back to the tables, a row of relatives scoffed at my apathy and said despite my foul attitude I was destined to get married anyway.

BF spent the rest of the night with the lacy blue garter proudly displayed on his arm, trying to keep me upright as I drank champagne directly from the bottle and tried to figure out what was wrong with me for being so afraid of marriage.

In a drunken stupor later that night I threw my arms around BF (champagne in hand) and told him “You know I want to marry you. Just not now. I’m not ready. But I will. Later.” I’ve told him before my fear has nothing to do with him, it’s the marriage concept that scares me. Hell, before BF I didn’t even consider marriage, ever. BF is so damn sweet and nice and considerate that he’s gotten me to warm up to the idea. It may be ten years before I’m warm enough to say yes, but I’ll get there eventually. Just too bad that’s not the answer I can tell his parents.

My dear sweet beloved cousin Dr Science is getting married this weekend in our hometown. I’m a bridesmaid. It makes me sad. I have no doubt that I’ll start crying (loudly and with lots of snot), but it won’t be because of what I’m supposed to be sad about. I’m not jealous that she’s getting married. I’m not worried that I’ll die an old maid. I’m not concerned that her fiance is wrong for her, I have great faith that they are perfectly nerdy for each other. It’ s just that I know things will never be the same again. No matter what she says and promises, things will change. That’s what happens when people grow up, get married, have kids, change jobs, get old. I’ve always known this, I just don’t want it to happen to Dr. Science.

For as long as I can remember, she’s been my partner in crime. When we were kids, I was shy, bookish, well-behaved, and introspective. But when I was around my cousin, one year older than me, we brought out the worst in each other in the best possible way. Boys, shopping, naughty cable channels, hours playing Nintendo and Monopoly (she always cheated), learning dirty jokes, doing all the bad things kids are supposed to do while they’re growing up.

When we were in high school we both had really serious boyfriends and we had a bet going on who would get married first… “I am!” “No, I am!” “Who would want to marry you?” “What weirdo wants to marry you?” Then in college it changed to “You’re going to get married first!” “No, YOU are!” “I don’t wanna get married! “What the fuck makes you think I do??”

She won, and it breaks my heart. Dr. Science has always been a step ahead of me, being a year older. I always saw Dr. Science as my older sister that I resented my parents for not providing me themselves. She taught me all sorts of things about boys, how to be cool, how to be more out-going, how to flirt–and with her endless supply of boyfriends, no one could have been better to teach me the things that comprise female adolescence. By the time I turned sixteen I had nearly caught up with her, now we were discussing sexy bras and hair and oral sex on the same level. She may have been doing these things longer, but I was a damn fast learner. By eighteen I had long ago lost my virginity, which I revealed to Dr. Science during a camping trip with all her college friends. She was shocked in a way I haven’t seen since. She’d lost her virginity years ago as well, but I knew about it. For some reason I had kept it to myself when it happened with my high school boyfriend. Was it because not only had I caught up with her, but passed her in the many rites of passage in becoming a woman? Already highly sexed, my sexuality was still forming at a scary rate. Although Dr. Science had had countless boyfriends, it seemed so normal, so un-intimidating, so nothing for her. With me it didn’t stop there. The potential was so much more than either of us wanted to admit.

At 21 I flew across the country to visit her at grad school where we did the standard grad student activities of dancing, drinking cheap beer, getting guys to buy us drinks, competing to see who got hit on more, stumbling drunk into convenience stores and demanding fresh pancakes–but it wasn’t so fun any more. The dynamic had changed. By this point I was the single one dating and sleeping around, she was the conservative one listening to my steamy stories with a sense of awe but I could hear in her slowly-conceived questions a new barely-there growing contempt for my behavior. Even now that I live with BF and we talk about marriage one day, it doesn’t matter. My cousin will still remember me as the awkward child who usually read while our cousins played in another room, just as she will remember me as someone who saw so much more in sex than a girl should.

So Friday morning I leave to drive the several hours home just in time to be at the rehearsel. It seems like a Tim Burton fantasmagical scene. Dr. Science wearing a beautiful elegant dress, the girl who normally wears purposely mismatched and clashing things bought at used clothing stores on the coolest strips in Austin, who thinks nothing of skipping and singing in public, who wears bright blue eyeshadow for the delight of watching old ladies whisper about her to each other. I’ll be beside her at the altar, her longest friend of the bridesmaids, knowing that things are about to change. But does it matter? One day she may be a bridesmaid at my wedding, crying just as I will, because we left each other behind long ago.

**Sorry for the sappy posts today. I woke up in a lousy mood, wrote one post this morning that put me in tears than even a Xanax couldn’t fight off, and I just haven’t climbed out of the hole today. Despite another Xanax this afternoon, fresh vanilla cake for dinner, I’m still feeling sulky and pensive. You know, one of those awful don’t-make-me-think-about-it-because-I’ll-cry days where all I’ve been thinking about how nice it will be to go back to bed where I belong.

As a child, I would often slip into bed to read with Mom before going back to my room to sleep. I remember sitting up in my parents’ bed with my book, looking around their room at all the items belonging to adulthood: Dad’s shiny shoes, Mom’s bras and lacy nightgowns, money and business magazines, luggage, scarves, red and maroon nail polish, thick hardback books, ceramic items I’d made in school, fancy purses saved for date night. I recall looking around the room, fascinated, waiting earnestly for the day I would own such adult things.

Of all the items surrounding me, none I wanted to possess more than the smell of my mother when I snuggled up to her, the book abandoned on my lap. Often she would smile down at me and maybe laugh at something I’d said, then turn back to her magazine and flip a page. She never realized that while my head was on her chest, I’d tilt my head up to breathe in the smell of her, something sweet and clean that I had not found anywhere else, what I later learned was the face cream shipped in from an overseas friend of hers. Once I asked her to use it on me but she said, as I commonly heard from grown-ups, I was too young for it–what six year-old needed face cream?

Now when I visit Mom and Dad very few of these adult things remain in their room. Most no longer hold importance for them, having grown well into middle age. Now I go into my parents’ room and it no longer smells wonderfully exotic, just old and settled. There’s no perfume or glorious travel books or beautiful clothes with foreign colors. All that remain of the original adult glamour are the stacks of magazines on money and business, many covered in dust. Books and clothes cover the bed, which Mom often sleeps on because she’s too tired to clear them off first. When I first noticed the disregarded energy of their room as a teenager I was saddened, even a little ashamed for them. Now that I’m older I understand, and I wonder how they maintained that level of energy for as long as they did.

While living in New York City, my parents booked a last-minute flight for me to visit home because I had called them crying or on the verge of crying so many times. That first night, weeping and broken and disappointed in myself for being a failure at my first attempt at adulthood, I climbed into their bed where Mom was reading one of her magazines. She looked up in surprise, but quickly made her small customary motherly smile. She had been in a similar place many years ago. Although she has never told me her story, I’ve heard enough pieces to know that it was her shaky first step toward being the strong woman I have breathed in all my life. Here she lay next to me, having long outlasted the exotic makeup and pretty nightgowns that I used to think were signs of being a woman. Her smile was no longer full or glowing, but it was there holding steady.

This time I didn’t use the pretense of a book to crawl into bed with Mom like when I was younger. I wrapped my arms around her and started crying quietly. Throughout my childhood I’d hide in my bedroom closet when I cried because I was too proud to be seen vulnerable, even in front of my parents. But for the first time, I was too empty to be embarassed. I let Mom pull me into her, her sweet soft neck smelling just like it always had.